I barge in."Saar" (yes, I say saar. I am ghat. So what?) "Ee address nodi swalpa."He checks, and my name's there. God bless. Though I doubt I'll change anything by voting, I can atleast rest satisfied that I attempted and failed. But there was one problem.

So, according to the Election Commission of India, one Nandana Sharma is married to my father, T S R Sharma. This news brought some surprise, but surprisingly little discord, within my household. My mother received the news that some strange woman is supposed to be married to her husband very coolly. 'Good for him,' I believe, is what she said.

This, and other tripe, has been going on in the past two weeks. Another interesting occurrence is the usage of the word 'tripe' even in one's innermost thoughts and feelings, since it was outlawed in 1968 after "the State of Maharashtra vs 'tripe.'" The most recent incidence of tripe was my wearing of footwear laterally inverted. Meaning, I wore my left slipper on the right foot and vice-versa.

While this may not make you stop eating whatever it is you're eating, push your child's face out of the way, administer a well-deserved punch to its left cheek, slam down the brakes and bang into the car in front of you, still not quite believing what you have just heard, in our family, that's exactly the kind of reaction you would get. It is believed, here, that if you wear your shirt or your vest('baneen' to Kannadigas and Tamilians) inside-out, your wife will run away from you. Many men, over many generations, have been zealously wearing their overgarments inside-out in the earnest hope that their wives will run away from home and leave them in peace. None more so than my grandfather. Every day, at aroiund 2:30, he goes into a room in his house and quickly takes off his shirt and puts it on again, inside-out. But no luck. My grandmother has made not one move signalling her intentions to flee as fast as feet can carry her(But my grandfather tries, nevertheless, undaunted).

So I tried, today, inadvertently, to turn my non-existent spouse away from the house. What with my grandmother and mother turning down marriage proposals, and me wearing footwear vice-versa, you may say I have been 'caught on the wrong foot.'